Queen Elizabeth joins Facebook, but she doesn’t want to be your friend

Update: Who knew that Facebook users have such a fondness for Her Royal Highness. As of Monday morning, the British Monarchy’s Facebook page has a respectable 72,600 fans. That’s head and shoulders above a joke account set up for the first Queen Elizabeth. That page only has 9,900 fans. Clearly, Facebook users are not amused.

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They are already regular users of Twitter and YouTube — but now Britain’s royal family is setting up its own page on Internet social networking site Facebook. The British Monarchy page features pictures, videos, news and speeches from Queen Elizabeth II and heir to the throne Prince Charles, plus his two sons Princes William and Harry, among others.

But Facebook users hoping to “poke” the queen, become her Facebook friend or post comments on her status updates will be left disappointed. The monarchy has created a page on the hugely popular site, rather than a personal profile, meaning that its Facebook followers will merely receive updates on new postings through their news feed. Buckingham Palace has frequently emphasised the queen’s desire to embrace new media.

She has a BlackBerry and an iPod and sent her first email from a military base as long ago as 1976, royal officials have said. Buckingham Palace set up a royal channel on YouTube in 2007 and signed up for micro-blogging site Twitter in 2009. The monarchy also has its own photostream on picture-sharing site Flickr.